to both houses on the seventeenth day of January, signifying
that the plenipotentiaries were arrived at Utrecht; and that she was
employed in making preparations for an early campaign; she hoped,
therefore, that the commons would proceed in giving the necessary
despatch to the supplies. The lord-treasurer, in order to demonstrate
his attachment to the protestant succession, brought in a bill which had
been proposed by the duke of Devonshire, giving precedence to the whole
electoral family, as children and nephews of the crown; and, when it was
passed into an act, he sent it over to Hanover by Mr. Thomas Harley.
The sixteen peers for Scotland were prevailed upon, by promise of
satisfaction, to resume their seats in the upper house, from which they
had absented themselves since the decision against the patent of the
duke of Hamilton; but whatever pecuniary recompence they might have
obtained from the court, on which they were meanly dependent, they
received no satisfaction from the parliament. The commons, finding Mr.
Walpole very troublesome in their house, by his talents, activity, and
zealous attachment to the whig interest, found means to discover some
clandestine practices in which he was concerned as secretary at war,
with regard to the forage-contract in Scotland. The contractors, rather
than admit into their partnership a person whom he had recommended for
that purpose, chose to present his friend with five hundred pounds.
Their bill was addressed to Mr. Walpole, who endorsed it, and his friend
touched the money. [174] _[See note 2 G, at the end of this Vol.]_ This
transaction was interpreted into a bribe. Mr. Walpole was voted guilty
of corruption, imprisoned in the Tower, and expelled the house. Being
afterwards re-chosen by the same borough of Lynn-Begis, which he had
before represented, a petition was lodged against him, and the commons
voted him incapable of being elected a member to serve in the present
parliament.

Their next attack was upon the duke of Marlborough, who was found to
have received a yearly sum from sir Solomon Medina, a Jew, concerned in
the contract for furnishing the army with bread; to have been gratified
by the queen with ten thousand pounds a-year to defray the expenses of
intelligence; and to have pocketed a deduction of two and a half per
cent, from the pay of the foreign troops maintained by England. It
was alleged, in his justification, that the present from the Jew was a
customary